Michi's Memories: the Story of a Japanese War Bride
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Michi’s Memories Michi’s Memories THE STORY OF A JAPANESE WAR BRIDE ~ Keiko Tamura Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Keiko Tamura Title: Michi's memories : the story of a Japanese war bride / Keiko Tamura ISBN: 9781921862519 (pbk.) 9781921862526 (eBook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: War brides — Australia. Japanese — Australia. Interracial marriage — Australia. Women immigrants — Australia.: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Originally published by Pandanus Books, 2001. This edition © 2011 ANU E Press “If we want to tell our story, we must call ourselves ‘war brides’, not just ‘internationally married women’. Our unique experience in the past forty years in Japan and Australia has been the experience of war brides, not just of women who had married foreigners.” Mrs Teruko Blair in an interview with the author Contents ix Acknowledgements vii Prologue xi Chapter 1 Encounters in Occupied Japan 1 Chapter 2 Marrying an Australian Soldier 15 Chapter 3 Becoming an Australian Wife and Mother 29 Chapter 4 Later Years 51 Chapter 5 Children’s Views 73 Epilogue Personal Reflections 87 Endnotes 95 Selected References 98 About the Author 101 Acknowledgements vii MANY PEOPLE have helped make this book possible. The greatest debt is of course to Michi herself. Without her cooperation and enthusiasm, the interviews and this book production would not have been possible. From the first time I met her, Michi has been always encouraging and supportive of this project. During my research, her warm hospitality in Adelaide was most appreciated. I would also like to thank Michi’s family for their understanding and cooperation. They supported this book project right from the start and Sumiko, George, Frances and William agreed to be interviewed by me. I hope this book will be of value to the present and future generations of her family, to appreciate their unique place in the history of post-war Australia. I would like to express my deep and sincere appreciation to other Japanese war brides who were generous in their support and encouragement. They include Mrs Teruko Blair, Mrs Chiaki Foster, Mrs Sadako Morris and Mrs Kazuko Stout. The original research for this book was carried out for my PhD thesis at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in The Australian National University. The thesis was submitted in August 1999 with the title “Border Crossings: Japanese War Brides and their Selfhood”. During my thesis writing years, many people were helpful. Special mention needs to be made of Dr Nicolas Peterson and Professor Hank Nelson, whose continuous guidance and encouragement were invaluable throughout those years. While I was working on this book, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Pacific and Asian History of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. Encouragement given by academic and administrative staff of the Division kept my enthusiasm going. Professor Hank Nelson and Ms Dorothy McIntosh were always ready Acknowledgements viii to give me excellent advice. I am much indebted to Ms Maxine McArthur, Divisional research assistant and established writer, for her help in editing the manuscript and giving me reassurance in times of doubt and insecurity. Publication of the book was made possible by a grant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This grant was coordinated by the Embassy of Japan in Canberra. I appreciate the contribution. I hope this book will play a small role in promoting better understanding between Japan and Australia at a grass-roots level. Finally, I thank my husband, David, and our two sons, Yoshio and Kenji, for their support and patience during the time I worked on the book. Without their understanding and encouragement, this book could never have been completed. I would like to dedicate this book to them. Keiko Tamura Canberra, January 2001 Darwin NORTHERN TERRITORY QUEENSLAND WESTERN AUSTRALIA Brisbane SOUTH AUSTRALIA Wallangarra NEW SOUTH WALES Perth Bogan Gate Sydney Adelaide Canberra VICTORIA Melbourne TASMANIA 0 1000 Hobart kilometres N TOTTORI SHIMANE H U N S O H OKAYAMA HIROSHIMA Hiroshima YAMAGUCHI Kure Iwakuni Hofu Etajima Tokushima SHIKOKU KYUSHU 0 50 100 kilometres Prologue xi THIS BOOK tells the story of Michi, one of 650 Japanese war brides who arrived in Australia in the early 1950s. The women met Australian servicemen in post-war Japan and decided to migrate to Australia as wives and fiancées to start a new life. In 1953, when Michi reached Sydney Harbour by boat with her two Japanese-born children, she knew only one person in Australia: her husband. She did not know any English so she quickly learned her first English phrase, “I like Australia”, in the car on the way from the harbour to meet her Australian family. In the last fifty years, she brought up seven children while the family moved from one part of Australia to another. Now, in her eighties, she leads a peaceful life in Adelaide, but remains active in many ways. Her voice is full of life and she looks and sounds much younger than her age. I met Michi for the first time in 1993 in Melbourne, at the first Japanese war bride convention in Australia. She was attending the convention with her friends from Adelaide. The day after the convention, some of the interstate participants including myself went on an excursion, and she sat across the aisle from me in the coach. In the coach, she was dozing off most of the time, probably because she had stayed up late the night before, catching up with her friends. At that time, she seemed no more than an ordinary old lady who tended to nod off frequently in moving vehicles. After the excursion, I was invited for dinner at the house where Michi was staying, so we went there together in the same car. To my surprise, as soon as we got into the car she started to tell me about her experiences in New Guinea during the war. Until then, I had not known that young women were dispatched from Japan as far as New Guinea as civilian support staff for the military during the Pacific war. Prologue xii During the evening, Michi talked about her life to me and the other women who gathered there. The image I had of a sleepy old lady suddenly transformed into that of an interesting woman who had experienced so much in various parts of the world. Soon after I returned to Canberra, Michi sent me her hand-written essay in Japanese with the English title, “Life Story of an Aging War Bride”, which told of her life with her Australian husband. It was a frank and moving account of her marriage and family, and further attracted my attention to her experience. I kept in touch with her by mail and met her again in Hawaii in 1994 when the first international war bride convention was held, but I could not arrange a substantial interview for a while. Finally, I travelled to Adelaide in February 1995 to interview her and other war brides in the area. I stayed at her house and carried out formal and informal interviews. I also had a chance to meet her first-born daughter, Sumiko. After the first series of interviews, I kept in regular contact with her and met her several times. The latest interview session I held was in November 1999, a month before her eightieth birthday. All the interviews were carried out in Japanese. The taped interviews were transcribed in Japanese and later translated into English by the author. The life history in this book is rendered from those interviews, informal talks and correspondence. Michi’s narrative of her experience spans over sixty years, and spans the Pacific Ocean. As an ambitious and adventurous young woman who grew up in pre-war Japan, her life changed its course dramatically during and after the Pacific War. In the face of total war and the subsequent defeat of Japan, an individual was powerless to change the political direction and social situation. For Michi, there was no choice but to follow the flow of the historical current and see where it would take her. However, as you will read in this book, there were some decisions that she made for herself and those decisions altered the course of her life. Readers will make a journey with her in time and space as she faces historical changes and personal challenges. The original research for this book was carried out between 1993 and 1998 for my PhD thesis in Anthropology at The Australian National University, Canberra. When an opportunity to work on a book of Japanese war brides arose, I chose to tell of their experiences by focusing on Michi’s life history. Since she was the eldest of all the women I interviewed, she had reached adulthood before the war Prologue started. Thus, her experience before and during the war was more xiii dramatic compared with younger war brides who were still at school in that period. Subsequently, I organised additional interviews with Michi and her children in order to collect more information to supplement the narratives that were recorded in the initial sessions. The chapter on her children’s perceptions was written for this book after interviewing the children.